Re:Gender works to end gender inequity by exposing root causes and advancing research-informed action. Working with multiple sectors and disciplines, we are shaping a world that demands fairness across difference.

Education & Education Reform

Women and girls have made substantial progress in educational attainment. Today in the US women receive more than half of all college degrees – and have almost achieved parity with men in advanced degrees in law, medicine and other disciplines. But several gaps persist, and more importantly, disparities remain among diverse women according to race, income, immigrant status and other socio-economic factors. Improving access to quality education for all students including adolescent girls and mothers needs to become a national and global priority.
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'Because I am a Girl: The State of the World’s Girls 2011 - So, what about boys?’ is the fifth in a series of annual reports published by Plan examining the rights of girls throughout their childhood, adolescence and as young women.

The report shows that far from being an issue just for women and girls, gender is also about boys and men, and that this needs to be better understood if we are going to have a positive impact on societies and economies.

Drawing on research and case studies, the report argues that working for equality must involve men and boys both as holders of power and as a group that is also suffering the consequences of negative gender stereotypes.

It also makes recommendations for action, showing policy makers and planners what can make a real difference to girls’ lives all over the world.

As President Obama and his team lead the nation, AAUW continues to be at the forefront of changes taking place in Washington, D.C. and beyond. On this page, you can read documents AAUW has submitted to the administration, learn more about the members of the president's cabinet, and find additional helpful resources.

From the presidential transition period to present-day, AAUW has been constantly looking for ways to move our priority issues forward. In fact, AAUW has been working closely with the president's team to ensure that breaking through educational and economic barriers for women is on top of the executive branch's agenda. Below are the latest documents AAUW has crafted in response to administration policies, as well as the initial documents AAUW submitted to the presidential transition team, which highlight our federal policy priorities and goals that we have been pursuing since President Obama took office.

Would having more women in leadership have prevented the financial crisis? This question challenges feminist economists to once again address questions of "difference" versus "sameness" that have engaged—and often divided—academic feminists for decades. The first part of this essay argues that while some behavioral research seems to support an exaggerated"difference" view, non-simplistic behavioral research can serve feminist libratory purposes by debunking this view and revealing the immense unconscious power of stereotyping, as well as the possibility of non-dualist understandings of gender. The second part of this essay argues that the more urgently needed gender analysis of the financial industry is not concerned with (presumed) "differences" by sex, but rather with the role of gender biases in the social construction of markets.

At MIT, we like data, especially data that advance our understanding of an important problem. In the 1990s, a group of MIT’s women faculty perceived patterns of inequitable resource allocation between them and their male colleagues. They collected data that demonstrated and quantified the problem, and they alerted the Institute’s leadership, in a search for practical remedies. Compelled by the evidence, MIT responded. Today, a new Report on the Status of Women Faculty in the Schools of Science and Engineering at MIT delivers the encouraging news that the process launched by these faculty women has made a lasting, positive difference for women faculty at MIT.

Women who begin college intending to become engineers are more likely than men to change their major and choose another career, but it's because they lack confidence, not competence, says a paper in the October issue of the American Sociological Review.

Editorial:

Women who begin college intending to become engineers are more likely than men to change their major and choose another career, but it's because they lack confidence, not competence, says a paper in the October issue of the American Sociological Review.

Specifically, women lack "professional role confidence," a term that describes, loosely, a person's sense that he or she belongs in a certain field. The term encompasses more than mastery of core intellectual skills. It also touches on a person's confidence that he or she has the right expertise for a given profession, and that the corresponding career path meshes with his or her interests and values.

As one of the most sex-segregated professions outside the military, engineering carries ingrained notions and biases about men being more naturally suited to the field, which can have self-reinforcing effects, notes the paper's lead author, Erin Cech, a postdoctoral fellow in sociology at Stanford University's Clayman Institute for Gender Research.

Social psychological research on gendered persistence in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) professions is dominated by two explanations: women leave because they perceive their family plans to be at odds with demands of STEM careers, and women leave due to low self-assessment of their skills in STEM’s intellectual tasks, net of their performance. This study uses original panel data to examine behavioral and intentional persistence among students who enter an engineering major in college. Surprisingly, family plans do not contribute to women’s attrition during college but are negatively associated with men’s intentions to pursue an engineering career. Additionally, math self-assessment does not predict behavioral or intentional persistence once students enroll in a STEM major. This study introduces professional role confidence—individuals’ confidence in their ability to successfully fulfill the roles, competencies, and identity features of a profession—and argues that women’s lack of this confidence, compared to men, reduces their likelihood of remaining in engineering majors and careers. We find that professional role confidence predicts behavioral and intentional persistence, and that women’s relative lack of this confidence contributes to their attrition.

The National Women's Law Center's 8th annual review of key child care subsidy policies in all fifty states and the District of Columbia reveals that families were worse off in 37 states than they were in 2010 under one or more child care assistance policies. Families are not only worse off in 2011 than they were in 2010, but are also worse off than a decade ago. Families in only eleven states were better off under one or more child care policy areas than last year, a sharp contrast to NWLC’s findings in the previous year when families in thirty-four states were better off in 2010 than they were in 2009 and worse off in only fifteen states.

The combination of disordered eating and heavy alcohol consumption known as drunkorexia is common among U.S. college students, researchers say.

Victoria Osborne, assistant professor of social work and public health at the University of Missouri, examined the relationship between alcohol misuse and disordered eating, including calorie restriction and purging.

The study found 16 percent of those surveyed reported restricting calories to "save them" for drinking, and of the respondents, about three times as many women as men reported engaging in the behavior.

Motivations for drunkorexia include preventing weight gain, getting intoxicated faster and saving money that would be spent on food to buy alcohol, the study found.

Drunkorexia could have dangerous cognitive, behavioral and physical consequences, as well as put people at risk for developing more serious eating disorders or addiction problems, Osborne said.

"Apart from each other, depriving the brain of adequate nutrition and consuming large amounts of alcohol can be dangerous," Osborne said in a statement. "Together, they can cause short- and long-term cognitive problems including difficulty concentrating, studying and making decisions."

People who participate in disordered eating combined with binge drinking are at an elevated risk for violence, risky sexual behavior, alcohol poisoning, substance abuse and chronic diseases later in life, Osborne said.

The findings were presented at the American Psychopathological Association and the Research Society on Alcoholism.

Raising the education level of the overall U.S. population requires closing the educational gaps among racial/ethnic groups and by gender. Although the members of the younger generation of some racial/ethnic groups are more likely to attain college degrees than their predecessors, that is not the case across all groups. Other findings include: the high school completion rate for young people has not improved much, and college enrollment gaps have widened among racial/ethnic groups during the past two decades.

The Minorities in Higher Education series, which began in 1984, is designed to help gauge the progress in our quest for educational excellence and equity for all races/ethnicities and for both men and women in American higher education. The full status report is produced biennially in even-numbered years, while updates on selected information are provided as a supplement in the intervening years.

Editorial:

About the report:

Raising the education level of the overall U.S. population requires closing the educational gaps among racial/ethnic groups and by gender. Although the members of the younger generation of some racial/ethnic groups are more likely to attain college degrees than their predecessors, that is not the case across all groups. Other findings include: the high school completion rate for young people has not improved much, and college enrollment gaps have widened among racial/ethnic groups during the past two decades.

The Minorities in Higher Education series, which began in 1984, is designed to help gauge the progress in our quest for educational excellence and equity for all races/ethnicities and for both men and women in American higher education. The full status report is produced biennially in even-numbered years, while updates on selected information are provided as a supplement in the intervening years.

The Transportation Equity Network's report, The Road to Good Jobs: Making Training Work, presents the first-ever compilation of data from all 50 states on their use of on-the-job-training and apprenticeship programs to boost job access for minorities and women in the federal highway construction field.

Editorial:

From the study summary:

With voices on all sides calling for job creation through infrastructure spending, how do we ensure job access for those hit hardest by the recession? That's the focus of TEN's latest study, The Road to Good Jobs: Making Training Work.

The new study presents the first-ever compilation of data from all 50 states on their use of on-the-job-training and apprenticeship programs to boost job access for minorities and women in the federal highway construction field.

The Road to Good Jobs: Making Training Work finds that most states are doing a poor job of using proven training programs to boost highway construction job access for minorities and women, though unemployment rates for minorities are nearly double those of whites, and female unemployment is ticking up while male unemployment is dropping.

Among the study's key findings:

Four states—Illinois, Indiana, Connecticut, and Minnesota—succeeded in increasing the percentage of both women and people of color in training programs from 2008-10.

Only two states had at least 50% women in OJT/apprenticeship programs from 2008-10: Maine (75%) and North Dakota (55%).

Community organizing by TEN members to push for broad use of OJT and apprenticeship programs led to top rankings and breakthroughs in Missouri, Michigan, Minnesota, and Illinois

Indiana and Illinois were standout states in terms of the overall increase in the use of OJT/apprenticeships from 2008-10, surpassing more populous states such as California and New York.

The Road to Good Jobs: Making Training Work provides detailed rankings on which states are using training and apprenticeship programs to make real progress toward equity and diversity in highway construction, and which states are failing to recruit and train women and minorities. The study also describes the steps necessary to improve states’ progress, and provides local, state and federal policy recommendations.

The study first looks at a number of important metrics such as the percent of women in on-the-job training programs and goes on to rank those states which have done exceptionally well in providing access to women.

MaryAnn Baenninger, president of the College of St. Benedict, suggests: The influence of gender is lurking on our campuses—in classrooms, in residence halls, on the bleachers at athletic events. It follows students as they study abroad, and it is the elephant in the room when students are learning to lead. The gender-laden experiences of our students have unanticipated consequences in their own lives and in society as a whole, yet those of us in higher education generally behave as if we live in a "postgender" world.